Heart at Peace

Try as she might, there was a part of her that couldn't believe it. All her life she had battled with this threshold between the end and a new beginning, reflecting on how each time life had given her just enough courage to face herself levelly at the door at which she now stood.  However as much as she resisted, deep down she loved this liminal space. This space where one discovered change was possible and that it was something to be welcomed and not feared. Even so, the thought of complete vulnerability that this space required was not a truth she took lightly, and each time it manifested itself in a new lesson that was both bitterly honest and lovingly inviting. Coming back to this place was not the same as never leaving, she reminded herself. Each confrontation with the door to transformation encouraged her to keep on in her path. She had been here before, and she would be here again.

She thought about the minutes and hours that would lead her to this defining moment of her life and onto her next adventure. In 24 hours she would be graduated, surrounded by friends and family congratulating her on her perseverance and inner drive to complete her academic goals. But what did it really mean?  What was so important about this piece of paper? What does it mean to have this diploma? Well, for starters it meant a job, stability, steady income, and the impending responsibility of adulthood. In many ways it was tangible proof of her competency and dedication to the system. And yet somehow all of these failed to capture the true essence of her experiences here while attending BYU-H. None of these could fully explain why she now felt herself drawn to the door of understanding, looking inward for the true test of her progress: her self-awarded diploma.

The Peacebuilding Program had been a defining moment in her academic career, to be sure, completely transforming the way she experienced her education and interacted with others. Being a part of the newsletter amplified these feelings of goodwill and service she had felt while studying the art of peace and sustainable change, allowing her to truly connect with her classmates on an informal level. Indeed, many of her friendships could be traced back to the Peacebuilding program, as they all struggled together to grapple with these concepts that at first seemed so ridiculously idealistic. But they weren't  and they had been proven possible time and time again as she applied its teachings to her own personal relationships with her parents, friends, and strangers. The pinnacle of her experience had been learning to look for change from within to trust and respect others humanity in order to create peaceful change. If there’s one ultimate reason I stayed, she reflected, it was probably because I needed to learn these lessons. Without it, she acknowledged, my education would have meant nothing. 

Looking around the room she surveyed the totality of her Hawaiian life piled in one small corner and felt a pang of nostalgia. Her portable life, as she called it, was now ready for its next adventure. She walked over to her dresser and pulled out one of her most sacred and valuable items:  her personal poetry book. It was a window to her soul, a way to express her inner communion with the divine for further understanding and transformation. This tool had been of even greater use after she had entered the Peacebuilding program and had really begun to search for her sense of voice. Flipping through the book, a page stuck out to her. She flattened out the page gently with her hand, and read those few scrawled lines:

“You have forsaken God!”

they tell me

when I do not enter

a designated set

of walls.

“You know no joy!”

they scorn as I

walk hand in hand

with the one I love.

“You are lost and alone!”

they judge me as I sit

silently at night, communing with

the god I’d never lost.

All at once the full scope of her struggle here at BYU-H came flooding back. The reality of her experience at the time of the poem’s authorship pained her anew. She thought about all the times she had heard people in the church talk down about her friends—gays, agnostics, less actives—with something more potent and painful than fear. Pity, undeniable pity for the ones who would never know an exclusive path to happiness only found in the church. “You can love them Sydney, but not like their actions” they cautioned her at church. Her friends were misguided, sex having, alcohol drinking, cursing sailor souls who were to be kept at a distance they counseled. “You don’t want them tainting your righteousness, do you?” they retorted. But what was this conditional love they preached? It wasn't the spirit she had come to know and follow, and it certainly wasn't the way she would describe her friends and their relationship. Growing up amidst these narratives she had always hated the idea that there had to be this distinction, that those who fell outside the absolute truth of religious construction were somehow less than, somehow not whole. That full love was reserved for those who followed a certain code. Her friends weren't perfect, but they were just as human in their mistakes as she was and were often more open to hearing her confessions of pain and guilt than others in the church had been. She was often encouraged to be an even better person, admit her faults, and progress onward with their support. And even more they still found love, they still sought to help others, and they still wrestled to discover who they were and what this existence meant. So why did she then feel like a traitor for voicing these equalizing principles aloud in church? “They can be and indeed are happy, I promise you!” she remember repeating over and over again. There were smiles, nods, and polite concern for her fascination of their independent values but generally an absolute apathy or complete rejection of her deeper meaning. “Their journey isn't in a different lesser language, but of the same thread” she wanted to yell, “you can’t know that through this self-righteous lens. You can’t really know them like I do through conditional love. They feel that limitation!” It was this dissonance that had led to her soul’s exploration of poetry to capture this explainable dialectic.

She remembered the day Professor Ford had used to poetry to speak on the art of creative Peacebuilding and how nothing had ever touched her so deeply. She felt like he had known, like he had chosen to speak to her that day in a language she would understand. And in his lesson she came to believe that it was through this gift she had learned to love and understand those whom she loved who were culturally prescribed as her “enemies.” She had spent hours searching, poured over texts and copying inspirational passages from one book to another, thinking about these issues of humanity that plagued those around her. Inwardly she could feel their faith, their happiness, in a language that transcended a set of walls and a group identity to which she had been taught were the “righteous ones” into one where she could acknowledge their own unique truths without trying to limit them and assume my identity had the whole truth. Slowly and nervously through time she began to articulate her own perceptions and in that breathed life into the resonance of her own discoveries.

The day that her “out” group became her “in group” was a turning point in her life, most specifically in her spirituality. It was a frightening day in which she thought about the reality of leaving the familiar and safe institution in which she had been raised. There were nights upon nights of tearful cries and more than enough hours of conversations with friends and family persuading her one way or another, but in the end she felt that she could not betray this sense to leave. It was a paradox she knew that not everyone would understand: how she could be so genuinely happy and deeply spiritually fulfilled outside the church. Reliving this journey and feeling the renewed sense of her earlier discovery; she was again reminded of another poem.  Frantically she searched the poetry book in her hands again and found the simple haiku she had written in class, a true message spoken from the depths of her soul which she had felt too ashamed to share. Perhaps it would be misunderstood, she had reasoned at the time, and besides, she wasn’t about to draw attention to herself. After all, it wasn’t the same anymore. Diversity did not mean the same thing here, it wasn’t accepted and open minded in regards to alternative spiritual discourse. She could not walk up to the pulpit and read the sweet words of Rumi and preach in reverent awe at his vulnerable and touching soul. Plus she didn’t need the shaming pressure of salvation or talks of the dangers of falling away and being a “son of perdition.” She knew where she was spiritually and in what way that had blossomed into something even more beautiful and mature than she had ever anticipated. What she needed most was merely a space of linguistic freedom in which she could express herself and be understood and loved, a freedom that poetry had only afforded her thus far. The poem in front of her was short, but its accuracy still struck her to her core:

You stripped our God down,

raised a mirror to your faith,

and called it his love.

Reading these words, she began to get angry. The carefully concealed walls of avoidance she had been building came sharply into view. She hated this church school and how it limited her sense of voice and freedom. There was no room for true exploration, and masks of self-righteousness prohibited church members from potential progression by their refusal to accept their own shortcomings. These people were all blindly ignorant to the realities of the world around them, living in their comfortable little bubble that was La’ie, refusing to accept that there were different ways of doing things, that there were other legitimate forms of finding and retaining spiritual happiness. Human beings were messy and more often than not they lived in a gray world, one that was always shifting and expanding. Organized religion was so ethnocentric, she reasoned, it monopolized god into an absolute view of truth and left many marginalized viewpoints in its wake. I’m the one who truly understands this space of transcendence, she told herself, and I’m the one who has truly sought to live and love among the other side. It was the church’s fault, religions fault. If only the other side would change, then she would have that inner peace.

The realization of her self-deception hit her with full force. The consciousness was terrifying.

How could she slip so easily? Was she truly a peacemaker? How could she move from one moment feeling like these people in her life were friends and allies, to feeling betrayed and painting them as unaccepting? Through the lens of self-righteous omnipotence she had fallen into the very act of intolerance and justification she had felt at the hands of those faithful members of the church. “When you think you know everything, that’s when you know nothing” she remembered hearing throughout the program, rolling her eyes at how many times she had easily attributed this to others and refused to apply it personally. And yet here she was participating in those same acts of domination, in colonization of truth, and had refused to see their humanity. One who is guilty of breaking one law is guilty of them all, she remembered Jim Ferrell preaching to them. It didn't occur to her that this applied outside of Christian doctrine into her own construction of the moral obligation she believed in. She finally felt like she knew the gravity of these words. It didn't matter how many transgressions others made, she was still accountable towards others humanity and as such she was equally in the wrong. She couldn't talk her way into this double-standard of justification. Looking back over her three years, she wondered how she ever got through living in this paradigm.

From outside the box, she could see that what was once perceived as ethnocentrism was merely a culture making sense of this spiritual realm by adapting the language of that space towards their understanding. Do I not do that when I confess the divine in my poetry? When I sit and meditate in that metaphysical space? Might I not make the same over-generalizations of those in the church that I argue members might make against those outside the faith? Getting into the box once more, she reflected on the journey that had led her to choose this paradoxical life at BYU-H. She couldn't lie and say she’d been perfect, or that her journey into her own spirituality had been one of inclusive altruism towards the church. She routinely found herself in the box being here, but she knew this was a lesson she needed to learn and practice in her relationship to the church.  People on either side are just as humanly weak as I am, she mused, and I can’t hope to inspire change in others if I myself am not first willing to make that hard step into forgiveness and accountability. She needed to change, but not in the way the church might advocate. It wasn't a behavioral change leading back into the church; it was a spiritual way-of-being transformation. One in which she could commune with the spirit that she came to know intimately in her transition outside of Mormon structured spirituality.

 “There is never a testimony without a test” they had told her throughout her young women career. And however she felt about the teachings of the church, she knew this wisdom to be true. For her, being at BYU-H had been a test in learning how to have a testimony in herself, others, and the divine. It was a test in learning how to find her voice and articulate this deep sense of individual divine communion while being surrounded by those who found that path through a different faith. While the Mormon faith was not the language in which she understood her relationship to that metaphysical presence that transformed her, she knew that many profited from this particular path and that the ultimate ending destination was the same: happiness and love. She firmly believed that one should follow whatever path they feel gets them to this space of exaltation, for it is only through individual exploration that one could find the passion and humility to live according to its principles of love. She indeed encouraged people who felt strongly that the church was there way of making sense of this positive transcendence to stick in their faith, because she saw how much the LDS faith had helped to shape her into the person she was today. For much of her childhood, the Mormon path had been her successful method on that journey, but as she grew into herself she began to seek another path. She no longer believed the path to this space to be absolute and fixed, and it was the experience of this personal spiritual change which had led her to know that the change needed to transform and get out of the box was possible.

It had been a tough experiment in learning to adopt this way-of-being by living amongst her new “enemies”, but it had been her proudest accomplishment. In this process of integration she had truly learned to destroy her enemies by making them her friends. And while it had taken her almost all of her three years at BYU-H, she had finally grown into the kind of tolerance and love she had been seeking for in kind by immersing herself amidst overwhelming religious conformity. Like the poem she so cherished by one of her favorite Middle Eastern poets, she wanted to be an example of someone who had “loved until she became love.” And it had been hard. Many a night was spent contemplating the potential ramifications of living within this paradox. But challenging herself to this endeavor was perhaps the greatest lesson of her life—to learn how to be at peace when all you wanted to do was run away and not confront this need for reconciliation. To learn how to leave the church and still see its structure and people as a person deserving of respect and love.

She knew without a doubt from Arbinger that there were two ways of being, and as such there were two ways to be in the church and two ways to be out of the church regardless of separate behavioral rituals. As a common human race we all have to come to a realization not on which side of the religious/nonreligious fence we stand, but on what side of touching other’s humanity we wanted to stand. The question she needed to know, here and now at the end of her personal application of peacebuilding principles here at BYU-H, was on which she stood. Would she continue to blame them? See them as less spiritual than her? If so, she didn't deserve that diploma. She wasn't standing on that side of the fence trying to touch others humanities and be an agent for change. She hadn't learned the lessons of being here that would help her the most after carrying that piece of paper off the stage tomorrow.

It was her final test, for which the grade only she herself could administer.

She walked over to her full length mirror and took a long hard look at herself. She was human, made of the same eyes, nose, arms, legs, and heart as anyone else she encountered. The image reflected in that glass humbled her. Taking a big breath, she filled her lungs with the warm Hawaiian air and closed her eyes.

For some peace means leaving, but for her it meant staying. It meant change, and facing her accusers and the fact that she herself participated in this accusing. Staying meant loving, and now leaving meant carrying that love with her. She knew from Arbinger that she could carry boxes of hate, but she also thought she might be able to carry this habitual spirit of love with her as well. Without this heart of peace, she knew she could not leave this place and hope to make a positive change in the world. Having a wandering spirit, she knew she might not always be able to stay and intimately take the time to repair each self-deception. But no matter where she went or for however amount of time, it was important that she continue to use liminal times like this to check herself and get out of the box, with whoever that might be. To accept change and to face her honest reflection in the mirror of her soul and realize the things she was both running to and away from. With this confession, deep down she felt a sense of calm and serenity. Taking another deep breath, she felt the art of stillness wash over her. A voice within her spoke, you are enough. Your work here is worthy of your next steps outside of it. And as tears rolled down her cheeks at last she allowed herself to believe it.